Why Donald Trump Keeps Giving Mick Mulvaney More Jobs

President Trump’s most recent personnel fiasco — in which he fired his chief of staff on the assumption that he had a replacement lined up, only for the replacement to bolt — highlighted the fact that not many qualified people want to join his clown show of an administration. Trump, by contrast, has insisted he has multiple candidates eager to take the job. He has answered the critics, sort of, by announcing the appointment of Mick Mulvaney as “Acting White House Chief of Staff.”

I am pleased to announce that Mick Mulvaney, Director of the Office of Management & Budget, will be named Acting White House Chief of Staff, replacing General John Kelly, who has served our Country with distinction. Mick has done an outstanding job while in the Administration....

Trump made the impulsive announcement in order to “disprove” critics who noted the lack of interest in taking this horrible job. His decision was so hasty that he blew off a Monday meeting with another job candidate, and hired Mulvaney, who was not even seeking the job when Trump saw him.

The “acting” part implies that Mulvaney will not be holding the job for very long. Which would make sense. Mulvaney has already held two jobs in the administration. In his role as director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, he has performed disastrously (from the standpoint of people who don’t want financial companies to defraud consumers) and highly effectively (from the standpoint of anti-government fanatics and purveyors of fraudulent financial products). Mulvaney’s leadership resulted in a 75 percent reduction in publicly announced enforcement actions and a concurrent spike in consumer complaints.

As director of Management and Budget, he has presided over an increase in the deficit of some $300 billion a year, which would be justified if the government was coping with either a large war or a recession, which it is not. In Mulvaney’s defense, this is not really his fault so much as it is the shared fault of the party-wide policy agenda that engineered this outcome.

All of this is to say Mulvaney is demonstrably effective at carrying out his party’s agenda (letting banks defraud consumers, blowing up the deficit with huge tax cuts) while pretending to do the opposite (protecting consumers, reducing the deficit). His new job requires imposing order on the president. Previous occupants in this role have not only failed, they have given up trying and lost all dignity in the process. Mulvaney asked for the “acting” bit to be in his title so he could leave the job quickly and say it was the plan all along, rather than suffer the inevitable torments of Reince Priebus and John Kelly.

The New York Timesreported last week that Trump seemed to appreciate the fact that his previous choice for the job, Nick Ayers, looked kind of like a young Trump. Mulvaney does not look quite as Trump-like as Ayers, but does possess other qualifications – or, if not “qualifications” exactly, then attributes Trump uses to judge candidates for the job. Axios notes that Trump also respects Mulvaney’s skill as a golfer, and that Mulvaney has built a rapport with the president by bringing “large charts and colorful graphics into the Oval Office.” He may not grasp the underlying policy but appreciates the color and the movement. Baby-sitter, golf buddy, white man who can successfully wear a tie and show up to work — Mulvaney is as suited for the job as anybody Trump was going to find.

#BREAKING: I’m told the entire @BPDAlerts Emergency Response Team has resigned from the team, a total of 57 officers, as a show of support for the officers who are suspended without pay after shoving Martin Gugino, 75. They are still employed, but no longer on ERT. @news4buffalo

In case you were wondering about the unmarked federal agents dotting Washington

Few sights from the nation’s protests in recent days have seemed more dystopian than the appearance of rows of heavily armed riot police around Washington, D.C., in drab military-style uniforms with no insignia, identifying emblems or names badges. Many of the apparently federal agents have refused to identify which agency they work for. “Tell us who you are, identify yourselves!” protesters demanded, as they stared down the helmeted, sunglass-wearing mostly white men outside the White House. Eagle-eyed protesters have identified some of them as belonging to Bureau of Prisons’ riot police units from Texas, but others remain a mystery.

The images of such heavily armed, military-style men in America’s capital are disconcerting, in part, because absent identifying signs of actual authority the rows of federal officers appear all-but indistinguishable from the open-carrying, white militia members cos-playing as survivalists who have gathered in other recent protests against pandemic stay-at-home orders. Some protesters have compared the anonymous armed officers to Russia’s “Little Green Men,” the soldiers-dressed-up-as-civilians who invaded and occupied western Ukraine. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi sent a letter to President Donald Trump Thursday demanding that federal officers identify themselves and their agency.

To understand the police forces ringing Trump and the White House it helps to understand the dense and not-entirely-sensical thicket of agencies that make up the nation’s civilian federal law enforcement. With little public attention, notice and amid historically lax oversight, those ranks have surged since 9/11—growing by roughly 2,500 officers annually every year since 2000. To put it another way: Every year since the 2001 terrorist attacks, the federal government has added to its policing ranks a force larger than the entire Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF).